Barton Moss: policing in the absence of democracy

Violence
has been a running theme within the policing of anti-fracking protests at
Barton Moss. Individual officers are acting with impunity. Is this reflective
of a policing strategy seeking to disrupt the protests on behalf of vested
interests?

Share this

Read more!

Get our weekly email

Enter your email address

Police and protesters at Barton Moss

On
January 14th Dr. Steve Peers, a legal observer at the anti-fracking
‘protectors’ camp at Barton Moss, was filming three police officers arresting a
protester. Video he
took shows one of the officers realising they were being filmed, walking up to Steve
and pushing him backwards onto the floor. Shortly afterwards another officer
walked up to him and jostled him away from the arrest, pushing him down the
road. This officer then started repeatedly asking if Steve had been drinking
alcohol before aggressively asserting that he had and loudly claiming that Steve
had admitted to doing so. Steve
was then arrested for refusing to submit to breath test.

Steve
does his legal observing with a video camera permanently mounted on a hard-hat
that he wears, so it is inconceivable that the officer did not realise he was
being filmed as he made this vindictive and wrongful arrest on a totally false
charge. This is the strangest part of the whole incident: why was the police
officer not concerned that this brazen abuse of power was being caught on
camera? Did he really have such confidence in his impunity?

The
anti-fracking camp runs along the verge of Barton Moss Road, which is used by
trucks dropping off equipment at the iGas drilling site, often several times a day. Each time a truck
arrives the protesters line up on the road, walking slowly in front of the
trucks and their police escort. The iGas site is currently home to a test
drilling rig, but the expectation is that if the results of the test drilling
are positive, iGas will try to extract shale gas from the rock formations below
Barton Moss using the controversial method of fracking. Fracking involves
pumping water and chemicals into the rock at extremely high pressure in the
hope that it will fracture and release the gas. It
has been linked with earthquakes and water pollution.
Shale gas is also a carbon intensive fossil fuel, a resource which needs to remain unexploited if we
are to have a reasonable chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

The
incident with Dr. Steve Peers is only one example of heavy-handed policing at
Barton Moss. I might instead have described in detail the disabled man shoved into a ditch by police rushing to arrest a pregnant
woman who was simply walking in the crowd; the legal observer who suffered a
broken eye socket during a particularly violent arrest which
was caught on camera; or the 15-year old girl on her first visit to the camp, who
had been hoping to gather material for use in a school geography project, but
instead was arrested while she was
simply walking down Barton Moss Road. Therearenumerousotherexamplescaught on video, and presumably many more which were not.

Taken
separately, these events might be easy to dismiss as the excesses of individual
officers. But taken together, it seems that something more systematic is going
on. Indeed, the strategic behaviour of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) strongly
suggests they are deploying a deliberate strategy of eliminating, disrupting or
suppressing the protests against fracking at Barton Moss, under which officers
know that excessive or violent behaviour will be overlooked or even tacitly
condoned.

The road to Barton Moss

Fracking
is a policy without a democratic mandate. The coalition government was formed
with a promise to be 'the greenest government ever', and fracking was not
included in either Liberal Democrat or Conservative manifestos at the last
election. Despite this, fracking in the UK is now official government policy
publically championed by the prime minister, who called for a “shale gas revolution”, and
by other senior ministers, including the chancellor. A number of individuals within or close to government stand to make a considerable
amount of money as a result of this policy change, including the chancellor’s
father in law.

Local
opinion is overwhelmingly
opposed to fracking, but Salford Council have granted a license at Barton Moss. Peel Holdings, who own the land at Barton Moss, as
well as large areas of Salford and the North West, have long been criticised for wielding undue influence over
Salford Council. The council also indirectly own shares in iGas, the company who are drilling
at the site, through the Greater Manchester Pension Fund.

This
is the political context for the policing operation at Barton Moss, and GMP
seem to have interpreted it as a license to suppress protest. While some of the
police tactics fit into a generaltrend towards more repressive policing of protest in the UK,
misuse of the law as a tool to suppress dissent is considerably more flagrant
than has been seen elsewhere.

Policing by PR

On
the 6th January, GMP raided the Barton Moss camp and searched it under section 43 of
the Terrorism Act 2000. The raid was immediately press-released by GMP, who
claimed they acted in response to a flare fired from the camp at a police
helicopter. The story spread, gaining much widerpresscoverage than
most stories about Barton Moss, but the search failed to produce any evidence related to the flare. During the
search the police left sleeping bags and clothing outside tents in the rain and
mud: potentially a serious risk to the wellbeing of people living outside in
the middle of the wettest winter on record.

The
section 43 power does not require a warrant, but is supposed to be used only
when a police officer “reasonably suspects” a person might be a terrorist.
There are numerous video cameras in the vicinity of the camp, including a
thermal imaging camera on the helicopter itself, which should have been able to
see the heat signature and path of the flare. After the search failed to find
any evidence to link the camp to the flare, GMP were challenged to release any
video evidence they have of the incident, but have not done so.

Even
if GMP's version of events is completely true, it is clear that they seized an
opportunity to search the camp without a warrant and to generate negative press
about the camp. It’s a matter of record that the police often use the press not
to inform the public, but to pursue their own
agenda, even
if this involves misleading the public or spreading false information. The
flare incident is reminiscent of police announcements of a “cache of weapons”
discovered near the Climate Camp in Kingsnorth in 2008, or the oil slick on
the A8 attributed to the Climate Camp in Edinburgh in 2010.

Whilst
extensive coverage of the protests at Barton Moss can be found in the local
press, particularly the Salford Star,
a local community newspaper, the national press have undertaken only
intermittent coverage. This makes 'policing by PR' all the more damaging.

Furthermore,
complaints figures seem to have been organised to make them useful within this
strategy of policing by PR. Solicitor Simon Pook, when complaining about an
officer who did not intervene when a car stuck somebody at the camp, was issued
with an incident number for the complaint that was dated several weeks
previously. When he questioned this, he was told that all complaints relating
to policing at the camp were grouped together as a single incident. This is
probably the reason for the suspiciously low number of complaints
against the police quoted in a press-released public statement by Peter Fahy,
Chief Constable of GMP.

Unlawful bail conditions

The
police abusing their power to
unilaterally set bail conditions is a recurring feature of the policing of
protest in the UK. This power is only supposed to be used in limited
circumstances, for example where it is necessary to prevent a further crime
being committed or to stop the arrestee absconding. Instead it seems that the
police regard bail conditions as a way to gain an injunction without the hassle
of having to make the legal case for one. They are used to intimidate or punish
people exercising their right to protest, giving them nightly curfews or
excluding them from entire geographic areas. This use of bail conditions by the
UK police was specifically criticised by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right
to peaceful protest in his 2013 report to
the UN Human Rights Council.

Despite this warning, and disregarding
existing case-law, GMP have routinely set excessive bail conditions for those
arrested at Barton Moss, banning them from returning to the camp. This began
with the first arrest in November 2013. Each subsequent arrest received
near-identical bail conditions. Within days of the first arrest these bail
conditions had been successfully challenged in the courts and replaced with
unconditional bail. But GMP have ignored the fact that every time a court has scrutinised the bail conditions they
have been overturned, continuing to hand
out the same punitive bail conditions to all arrestees.

It isn't possible to discern why GMP have continued to
pursue a policy which contradicts existing case law, breaches
human rights legislation and flies in the face of the recommendations of a UN
Special Rapporteur. When I asked them what guidance was being used in setting
bail conditions they would not give specifics. However, it seems likely that
part of the intention was to intimidate, disrupt and interfere with people's
right to protest. It has also allowed GMP to quote inflated and misleading
numbers of arrests in their public statements. At the time of writing more than one arrest
in every ten was for breach of bail conditions: bail conditions which should
never have been set in the first place.

While
GMP have publicly complained about
the cost of their policing operation at Barton Moss, citing the number of
arrests, their public statements have not mentioned the cost to the taxpayer of
the police work, detention, court time and lawyers generated by their refusal
to comply with the rule of law when setting bail conditions.

Obstructing legal representation

Questions
also remain over the offences used to charge people at Barton Moss. Until
recently, all those arrested in connection with stopping or slowing the trucks
on Barton Moss Lane were charged with obstruction of the highway. This seemed a
little counter-intuitive, as the lane is a public footpath on a private road,
not a public highway. GMP knew this: it formed part of their defence in a civil
case brought against them by one of the protesters, and officers were also photographed in
early January taking away footpath signs from the lane.

After
the first arrest in November it was made clear within a matter of days that
those charged with obstruction of the highway would use the defence that the
lane was not a public highway, and could well be acquitted. Nonetheless, GMP
continued to arrest and charge people with the same offence for the next three
months. When the inevitable ruling came
on 13th February that the lane was not a highway, this meant that around fifty individuals had
been wrongfully arrested and had their cases dismissed.

After
a day where the protesters were allowed to block trucks from accessing the
drilling site, the police returned and delivered what appears to have been a
dose of retributory violence. One woman was hospitalised after
being apparently strangled and dragged through mud in handcuffs, and the police
were witnessed hitting out, attacking photographers
and preventing the access of legal observers. Arrests on that day and
subsequently have been made for aggravated trespass, rather than obstruction of
the highway. As the offense of aggravated trespass has been available to the
police throughout, the question arises of why they persisted in arresting
people for obstruction of the highway for three months when there was a good
chance they would be acquitted.

Aggravated
trespass carries a higher penalty and would almost certainly have been easier
to prove given the situation at Barton Moss Lane, so why didn't the police use
it? One key difference between the two charges is that individuals accused of
obstructing the highway are not eligible for legal aid to fight the charge.
Without legal work being taken on pro bono by local solicitor Simon Pook and
barrister Richard Brigden, it
is likely that the wrongful arrests for obstructing the highway could have
resulted in successful prosecutions, and that unlawful police bail conditions
would almost certainly have been unchallenged, a miscarriage of justice effecting
over sixty people.

If
it seems unthinkable that GMP would arrest people for a certain offense in
order to make it more difficult for them to access legal representation, note
this. The solicitors firm representing most of the arrestees has had several
clients report police behaviour intended to deny them their fundamental legal
rights. On one occasion a defendant was simply told that their chosen
solicitor's firm were 'too busy,' and although a member of the firm was
actually present in the same police station they were not consulted on the
matter. On another occasion Simon
Pook was prevented from visiting a client in hospital by a police officer who
pushed him and told him to “fuck off”.

In
the absence of a more plausible explanation, the obvious conclusion is that GMP
deliberately set out to suppress the dissent at Barton Moss by arresting
numerous individuals on a bogus charge where they were not eligible for legal
aid and presenting them with unlawful bail conditions which interfered with
their right to protest. Far from being “stuck in the middle” as claimed by
Chief Constable Peter Fahy, GMP has treated the law as just another
tool which should be utilised with maximum leverage to achieve the desired
outcome – the suppression of dissent at Barton Moss.

Policing in the absence of
democracy

Almost
all of the elected representatives which are supposed to hold GMP to account
are supportive of fracking at Barton Moss, and have so far failed to provide
any meaningful oversight. The elected police commissioner for Greater
Manchester, Tony Lloyd (who draws a salary of £100,000 and commands a staff of 40), was silent over the first 2
months of the protests and police violence, only issuing a mild statement of
concern in early February. Following recent events he has set up an 'independent panel' to investigate the protests, but it
remains to be seen whether the panel can seriously act as a check on the actions of GMP.

Although
one local MP has voiced concerns about
the policing operation, not a single Salford city councillor has made any
public statement on the issue, nor has the elected mayor. Meanwhile, the prime
minister has derided opponents of fracking, accusing them of “religious”
irrationality.

The
policing at Barton Moss needs to be understood in the light of this discrepancy
between the support of elected representatives and the widespread opposition of
local people. When those in power feel they are entitled to decide policy
without consulting people who are likely to be affected, it is hardly surprising
that any dissent by those people will be regarded as illegitimate. It is only a
small step from there to enforcing contentious policy using violence, and
deploying the law as a tool to suppress dissent.

Just
as the most obvious explanation for the violence used by individual officers is
that they believe they have tacit approval of their superiors and expect to be
protected by them, the most obvious explanation for the tactics and strategy
that GMP are pursuing is that they believe they have tacit approval and expect
to be protected by their political masters. The indications are that police
violence at Barton Moss has got worse over
the last few weeks, rather than better. There are fears that if Peel Holdings
are successful in their application for an eviction order for the camp, GMP may
take the opportunity to be even more brutal.

Barton
Moss is an advanced case of what policing looks like when those in power work on
behalf of private and corporate interests, rather than the people they are
supposed to be serving. We need to pay attention, because unless we engage in
wholesale reform of our governing structures and the police, this is something we
are going to be seeing a lot more of in the future.

Related

This article is published under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any
queries about republishing please
contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.